Tag Archives: New pedagogical forms

It is a central problem we face as we move toward some type of post-industrial society. Our current institutional structures, based on industrial era models, attempt to re-create the past as a way to solve the problems of the future as opposed to envisioning the new.

What do I Mean by Old Eyes

What is new today? Let’s consider complexity. To some extent it’s the success of industrial standardization that has driven the emergency of complexity in the service economy. With increasing efficiency, fewer and fewer people are needed to continue standardized processes, but this success has uncovered worlds of complexity not only where standardization has failed (like in education and much of the social sciences), but also in new fields such as design. The problem is that most people today (even within standardized practices) need to address uniqueness and complexity in some way, but too much of our institutional structures are still geared towards a standardized industrial economy that emphasizes “one size fits all” solutions.

An example is NY Times columnist Thomas Friedman’s view that we need a more highly educated population to address globalized competition. This may be true, but what would happen if we suddenly started graduating 4 times the number of scientists and engineers. Well, we’d soon have a lot of unemployed or underemployed scientists and engineers. What the economy needs now is more entrepreneurialism of the type that fosters a creative interdisciplinary mindset. We can only succeed now by envisioning and creating the world around us anew, not by growing an economy that in many ways has already become outgrown. The educational systems is still seeing through old disciplinary eyes and training people to function in the past. We have seen how the world we face is increasingly requiring us to deal with complexity, but as pointed out by D.H. Haley, our way of thinking, seen as a cultural artifact in our everyday activity, rejects complexity and interdisciplinary. (free with subscription to the Social Science Research Network)

. . . despite their successful interpretations and applications, they (complexity and ecology) have been accepted by neither mainstream science, nor mainstream culture. Both of these powerful institutions have pushed such modes of thinking and being to the margins of normative knowledge and behaviour, without ascribing any real value or worth. . . . For here, I believe is the real issue, . . . it is embedded in how our society is educated to think. Just as an athlete trains their muscles to perform certain activities in particular ways, so too, we are coached to think about particular things in certain ways ␣ it is a question of epistemology.

What Would New Eyes See

So how should institutions now be thinking and functioning differently? I believe we need a new approach to learning and a new way to develop people and their capabilities.

A new approach to learning.

Learning has never been more important, but (as pointed out by Hagel, Brown and Davison) we can no longer predict what knowledge people will need in order to push it out to them. Instead the learner is in as good a position as anyone to judge what knowledge is needed and needs to be able to pull that learning to themselves as needed. (If nothing else, this is a condemnation of most approaches to curriculum development, and many forms of pedagogy.) To achieve a “pull” model I think we will need the following:

technological resources (internet, social media, applications as well as future innovation),

expert guides (a new role for teachers), coaches, mentors, etc. . .

peer networks that push our collaborative capabilities to new levels, and

a vibrant, engaging and vigorous environments (cognitive, social and physical)

All of these elements should by intricately interwoven into each learners learning environment.

A new approach to developing people.

We need people with both breath and depth in their repertoire of personal capabilities. Base assessment and development activities not on what you want people to know, but on what they will need and want to do.

Breath primarily means interdisciplinarity, especially as you are able to bring different capabilities from different disciplines into your own activity system. This also means going beyond specific task capability to also include cognitive development and psychological capital development, as well as the promotion of psychological health and wholeness.

Depth – The need for depth should be based on something like an activity system task analysis, the most important actions needed for everyday activity. I don’t like a disciplinary view of depth only because the scope of a discipline can be unrelated to everyday activity within an activity system. It is just that disciplines are historical artifacts with specific historical developmental trajectories, which may or may not fit with the needs of one’s activity system.

This transdisciplinarity need is where new forms of complexity enter into education. A one size fits all disciplinary education is no longer sufficient. We need an educational system that can easily be customized to fit individual learning / capability development needs and a system that can be extended over an individual’s productive lifetime.

So, I’m left with the question: what does this look like; what might new eyes see?